Disease and Disability in the Middle Ages

FAIN: FS-50189-08

Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ 85281-3670)
Monica H. Green (Project Director: March 2008 to June 2010)

A five-week seminar for fifteen college and university faculty to study the connections between Western medieval medical history and the social and cultural implications of health, disease, and disability.

Based at the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at University College, London, and the Wellcome Library (the world's premier research center for medical history), this Seminar will gather scholars from across the disciplines interested in fundamental humanistic questions of health, disease, and disability in medieval Europe. A primary goal will be to explore how the new scientific technologies of identifying pathogens (particularly leprosy and plague) can inform traditional, humanistic methods (historical, literary, art historical, and linguistic) of understanding cultural responses to disease and disability. Equally important will be to demonstrate how understanding traditional, humanistic studies of medieval medicine can inform modern scientific studies of disease.